


To Becomes Hermits

by Tomcat_Acaphe



Category: Hermitcraft
Genre: Apocalypse, Hermitcraft - Freeform, baby's first fanfic?, hcraft, impulse has a bad time: the saga
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tomcat_Acaphe/pseuds/Tomcat_Acaphe
Summary: All it took was one stupid mistake from Concorp Industries to wipe out almost all human life. However, some survive. But what happens when, in a last ditch effort, a mysterious old man broadcasts a radio signal offering shelter to all who lived?
Comments: 19
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! Any warnings will go right here at the start!  
> I don't know what my upload schedule will be, but I'm hoping for at least twice a week? I don't know.

Peering down the microscope, Scar studied the virus inside the petri dish. Definitely looked deadly. According to his partner, Cub, in just a few days it could rot skin and turn whoever it infects into a bloodthirsty cannibal. Apparently it was to help cure something by only eating certain tissues, but so far it was eating all tissue.  
There was a weight nipping at Scar’s boots. His cat, Jellie, weaved between his legs, purring.  
“Do you want food?”  
Jellie meowed in response.  
Cub rolled his eyes, “feed her in a bit, she can wait. We have to finish what we’re doing here before it potentially escapes.”  
“But Cub… she’s hungry…” Scar picked up Jellie like a human baby, scratching her belly and giving her kisses on the forehead.  
“Scar, please keep your focus on the task at hand.”  
But it was too late, Scar was already leaving.

Scar made his way to the other side of the room. The 'cat corner,' as he called it. He opened the cabinet and pulled out a box of wet food. Jellie put her head right over the bowl and at least half of her meal ended up on her head instead of in the bowl.  
Scar let out a breath of laughter, “oh, Jellie!” He wiped some of the food off her with his finger and into the bowl, “right. Now where was I?” He resumed back to the other side of the lab to where his petri dish was sitting on the table. The lid was to the side, leaving it open.  
“Hey Cub?”  
Cub didn’t look up from his microscope, “yeah?”  
“Did you open this petri dish?”  
Cub remained quiet. He glanced over at Scar, “Scar?”  
There was a lump in Scar’s throat. The world seemed to go a deafening quiet as he realised what had happened, “yes, Cub?”  
“Do you know how much you just cost Concorp industries by letting the virus lose?”


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I checked with the medical stuff with my mother, (she's a nurse.) She took a long drag of her cigarette and said 'oh, that might work but realistically, no clue.' Helpful.  
> Warning: Blood, gore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Blood and Gore.

It’s not every day you get to go to a cosplay convention with your friends. All four of them had decided to sleep in a tent in the outskirts of the centre for the night.  
“Bdubs!”  
Someone’s hand touched and shook Bdubs’ shoulder, “Bdubs!”  
Bdubs groaned, “whaat?”  
DocM77 was hunched over Bdubs. His face was still covered in green face paint from the cosplay day before. In fact, pretty much everyone was still in cosplay. Etho was still dressed like Kakashi from Naruto, Doc was still green and in a lab coat and Bdubs was still wearing a red bandana around his forehead. He didn’t put as much effort into his cosplay as the others, but they insisted he do something.  
Doc opened his mouth,“there are zombies outside.”  
Bdubs rolled over, “nah.”  
“Nah?”  
“Fake news…” the sleep dust in his eye lashes made him close his eyes again. Although the sleeping bag’s walls were thin, they were extremely warm. With his sleepy state of mind, the warmth felt soft enough to fall asleep in.  
DocM77 grabbed his arm and yanked him up, “get up!”  
Bdubs stifled a scream.  
“Good morning!” Etho was sitting cross legged on his sleeping bag. He tilted his head slightly trying to appear friendly. It was hard for him to emote given the dark mask covering his nose and mouth.  
Bdubs rubbed the back of his neck, “morning, Etho.”  
“Bdubs, there are zombies outside, I’m not lying,” Doc seemed serious.  
“Oh yeah? Prove it!” Bdubs challenged.  
Etho unzipped the tent and looked out, “you have my word.”  
“Wait…” Bdubs glanced at Vintagebeef, “you guys weren’t lying?”  
His three friends looked at each other, “no?” Etho finally said, “you slept through the start of the apocalypse.”  
“I slept through the start of the apocalypse?!”  
“Yes.” 

Etho crawled off his sleeping bag and rolled it back into a bag. He put the bag in a slightly bigger backpack and crawled out the tent. He threw the backpack over his shoulders and stretched his arms up into the sky. One by one, the others packed their stuff and followed him out.  
Vintagebeef began packing up the tent, “so Doc, what’s the plan?”  
Doc pressed his hand under his chin in thought, “get food, get weapons, find shelter, not die.”  
“Oh! Do you think there’ll be food in the shelter?” Bdubs looked over there. It was a big area, there’d have to be some somewhere.  
“I think that’ll be a good place to start.” Doc finished packing up the tent and began walking.

The inside of the centre was so much cooler than the outdoors, there was definitely some form of air-con. The floor was a shiny concrete and the room was so big they’d be able to see zombies coming at pretty much any angle.  
Vintagebeef looked around, “it’s a big area. I think we should split-”  
“What, are you crazy?!” Bdubs almost glared at him, “that’s a death wish if I’d ever heard one!”  
Doc nodded, “for once, Bdubs is actually right.”  
“For once?”  
Etho’s eyesight was never the best. But he did know one thing. Down one of the corridors was the silhouettes of a horde of humanoid figures. They were all walking like they were drunk, slowly and unsteadily. Etho didn’t take his eyes off them, “hey, guys?”  
“What, do you not want me to give you compliments?” Doc argued.  
“No, I’m just saying right more than once! In fact, I’m usually right! You just don’t want to give me credit!” Bdubs shouted, angry.  
“Guys, there are zombies,” Vintagebeef repeated.  
Bdubs and Doc looked down the corridor in unison, “we don’t even have any weapons…” Bdubs’ voice was quieter than before.  
“Run!” Doc shouted and ran away.

Bdubs was struggling to stay at a pace where he’d be behind Doc. He was always the fastest of the group on foot. But he didn’t want to leave his group behind. Unfortunately for him, fastest didn’t necessarily mean best stamina. They must have been running for at least 8 minutes now at full speed. The adrenaline coursing through his veins must have helped in maintaining energy in some form, usually he’d get tired after a few minutes.

Doc turned a corner and hid in a room off to the side. When the last person, Vintagebeef, was in, he slammed the door shut. Etho pushed a chair under the handle in an attempt to create a makeshift lock. Etho fell limp against the door, panting like he’d just run a marathon, “we good?”  
“We’re good.” Doc leaned against the wall. His eyes scanned around the room for anything he could possibly use as a weapon. There were a few baseball bats lying against the wall.  
Etho picked one up, “perhaps these could help?”  
“I think you’re onto something, Etho!” Doc picked up another three and passed them to the remaining members of the group.  
“Are we ready?” Vintagebeef asked.  
Doc nodded. He moved the chair away from the door and opened it, sprinting out.

The others ran after him. Doc halted, causing Bdubs to slam into his back, “hey-! What gives, man?!”  
Bdubs peered past Doc and immediately knew why he stopped. The horde was right there, slowly walking towards them.

Doc was the first to charge towards them, bat in one hand, violently striking as many zombies in the head as he could. The others followed, mostly sticking in a group. That is, aside from Beef. 

Slowly but surely, Beef had managed to separate himself away from the other three. Stepping back, he tried to put some distance between him and the zombies. The cold wall hit his back. The zombies were so close to him, practically touching him. Etho was the closest nearby.  
“Etho!” Vintagebeef shouted, begging him for help.

Etho looked up from the crowd. He ran as fast as he could to Beef’s location and threw up his arms in protection. One of the zombies groaned. It opened its jaw and closed its mouth around the front of his neck. It clamped down, hard. Etho choked out a cough and instinctively tried to push it away.  
“DOC!” Beef screeched at the top of his lungs, “DOC, COME QUICK! ETHO’S DOWN!”  
Doc turned around from the other side of the room and ran over.

The entire front of Etho’s neck was stained red with blood. It oozed from the teeth marks in his neck, letting drops run down in thin lines onto his shirt. He fell limply against the wall. The blood left a still wet, brown stain at the collar. In the wound were small, darker dots around the edges. His pale skin was torn near the chin too.  
“Etho!” Doc put his hands on Etho’s shoulders. His heterochromic eyes were half open, but there didn’t look to be any kind of awareness behind them, “Etho! Speak to me, dude!”  
Upon hearing no answer, Doc led Etho down on the ground. “Bdubs!”  
Bdubs looked over at Doc from not too far away.  
“You’re gonna need to watch my back!”  
Bdubs nodded and prepared his battle stance. He screamed and started beating to death any zombies that came nearby.

The best Doc could do with Etho was stop the blood. He took off his lab coat and planted it on the ground beneath his feet. He pulled as hard as he could until he had a big enough, torn part in his palms. He pressed it against the front of Etho’s neck. He picked up Etho’s, now limp, arm. He pressed two fingers against his cold wrist: he still had a pulse.  
There was still hope. There were a few things he could deduct about the wound from this: The zombie must have only bitten him lightly, gummed his neck even. The average human male has the bite force strong that, if they had bitten where Etho had been bitten, at full power, they could rip out the trachea. Judging that Doc could still see the shallow rise and fall of Etho’s chest, he was still very much breathing.

Vintagebeef was staring down at Etho and Doc, there was sympathy in his eyes. He shook his head, “we can’t stay here, Doc.”  
“Where do you suggest we go?” Doc asked, not daring to look away from Etho.  
“I know a guy. He’s been preparing for something like this his whole life. I called him crazy but it was all just banter. I’m sure he’d let us stay.”  
Doc picked up the limp Etho like a maid. Etho’s arm dangled at his side, it swung a little from the initial momentum of being picked up. If not for Doc confirming his status, it would be reasonable to assume he’d be dead.  
“Gather Bdubs and lead the way, Beef.”


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You guys can have some wholesome ZIT. As a treat.

Noticing his phone ringing from across the room, XbCrafted rolled his way out of bed like an overdone sausage. Rising to his feet, he walked over and picked it up.  
‘Hypnotizd’ the name read. Oh, that was his dad’s friend, wasn’t it? He answered the call, “Hello?”  
“Yo. So I heard there was a virus?”  
XbCrafted blinked, “there’s a virus?” He began to put on a bathrobe.  
“There’s a virus, yeah.”  
XbCrafted yawned, still tired from waking up 5 seconds ago. It was still dark out, the sun hadn’t risen yet, “what’s the virus do’?”  
“Turn people into zombies.”  
Beginning to walk down stairs, XbCrafted laughed, “zombie apocalypse, huh? What timeline even is this?”  
“Xb, I’m being serious!” Hypnotizd continued to talk while XbCrafted made himself a cup of coffee, “there are zombies outside my house and knocking on my door. Just look outside and see for yourself!”  
XbCrafted rubbed the sleep dust out his eyes and turned to look out the window. Ah, zombies. Hypnotizd wasn’t joking.  
“Xb? Xb!” Hypnotizd called down the phone.  
XbCrafted sighed, “nothing surprises me anymore, Hypno. Nothing. Okay, my house is way more fit to survive something like this than yours is. I think? I’ve never been to your house actually. Anyway- I have a basement with shelves of tinned food and like… one chainsaw. So what I suggest is-”  
“Yeah?”  
“Come round my house and we can wait it out together.”  
“You live like an hour away on foot, is that even a good idea?”  
XbCrafted could barely take his eyes off the things outside, “If you go through the woods you’ll probably be fine? It’s a bit longer but I’m pretty sure it’s safer? I mean, all the zombies are gonna be in the streets and towns because that’s where all the people are, right?”  
“That is a compelling argument… okay, if I die, it’s your fault.”  
XbCrafted walked into his living room, coffee mug in hand and sat down comfortably on his sofa, “lol, okay. Okay, good luck!”  
Hypnotizd laughed, “if I die, can we truce?”  
“Sure. I’d love a zombie friend.”

“Tango, how long have we been walking?” Zedaph asked, “my feet hurt.”  
“Zedaph, we’ve been walking for two minutes,” Impulse reminded.  
“Hey-! I never said I was fit!”  
Tango smiled, “we can stop for a break, and to be fair, we did run for like… the first minute and a half. And if I stand corrected,” Tango checked his watch, “it’s been four minutes. So actually, Impulse, I don’t blame Zed for being tired.”  
“Aw, come on! He’s two decades younger than us! He should be full of energy!” Impulse smiled.  
“I have the energy of a coffee with 9 sugars and a can of redbull. That is, until I need to use it,” Zedaph corrected. He sat down on a tree stump, “c’mon! The zombies won’t find us here!”  
Tango sat down on the dirt floor of the forest, “yeah Impulse, lighten up! We don’t have to be moving all the time!”  
Impulse lead against a tree, “you guys are lazy, but okay, I guess.”  
Zedaph pulled a tin of heinz baked beans out of his bag, “snacks, anyone?”  
“How are you gonna cook that?” Tango asked.  
“And more importantly, how are you gonna open it?” Impulse asked.  
Zedaph stared at the tin, “hmm…”  
“Is this your first time using your brain?”  
“Bold of you to assume I have a brain.”

Tango perked up, “I have an idea!” He picked up a particularly sharp stone from the floor, “hey Zed, pass the beans!”  
Zed put the tin of beans in Tango’s palm. Tango dug the rock into the edge of the lid. All it did was draw a chalky line.  
“That was smart.”  
“Shut up Impulse, I wanna see you get this tin open.”  
“Give it here then.”  
Tango stepped over to Impulse and passed it, “let’s see the genius of the group try.”  
Impulse pulled on the ring-pull of the tin like anyone with a normal brainstem would. It snapped off, making the tin being opened by normal means impossible. He handed the tin back to Tango, sheepish and wordless.  
Zedaph laughed, “you nearly had it!”  
Impulse rolled his eyes, “shut up. Any other bright ideas?”  
Tango picked up a stick and put the tin on the floor. He began to lightly stab it, “aww… c’mon, lil guy. Open!”  
The tin ignored his request and remained closed.  
“Maybe you should ask it nicely?” Zedaph recommended.  
Tango crouched down to the tin’s level (very low) and whispered, “helloooo, this is an ASMR TangoTek video. I’m gonna mine the crafts and I want beans, please open?”  
Zedaph wrapped his forearms around his torso as he laughed, “TangoTek ASMR video when?”  
Tango rose to his feet once again, tin in hand. “Any other ideas?”  
Zedaph thought, “throw it on the ground?”  
Impulse groaned, “you guys are stupid.”  
Tango grew the widest grin as he threw the tin at the ground, “open, sesame!”  
“I’m leaving,” Impulse leaned off of the tree and continued wandering down the path.

Heinz Baked Beans juice spilled all over the forest floor like beany-blood. Zedaph was laughing so hard he was barely making any sound outside the occasional gasp for breath.  
Tango laughed but eventually calmed down, he stared at it on the ground, “I don’t suppose we can eat this now, can we?”  
Zedaph wiped away a single tear, “can we?”  
“The juice is there to keep it in-date. They’ll go out of date if we don’t eat 'em now.”  
“Can you get to the beans?”  
Tango slid his finger into the hole in the lid. “I don’t think we can get beans this way…”  
“Oh! Oh! Let’s have some fun, actually!” Zedaph took a few steps back and picked up a decently thick stick from the ground. “Throw it at me and I’ll see how far I can hit it!” Zedaph touched the stick to the ground a couple times like how he’d seen baseball players do before.  
Tango snorted, “runner up!” He launched the tin at Zedaph. The tin spewed juice everywhere. Zedaph hit it and it exploded. It was a scene out of a horror movie. Beans splattered up the trees, on the grass. It was like Quentin Tarantino had directed a movie but they had to release it to pre-schools and they censored all the blood with baked beans.  
Zedaph hunkered over, one hand on his knee, laughing. Once he thought he had calmed down, he looked back up, saw the bean-horror-scene and resumed his cackling.

Tango smiled, laughter in his words, “we should hold a funeral.”  
Zedaph picked a small, weed-grown daisy from the ground and gently placed it over the battered can. He stroked it and let out a long ‘shhhh,’ sound as his hand ran down it.  
He stepped back to Tango’s side, “we gather here on this day-” he tried to not laugh, “to commemorate the loss of Zedaph’s tin of baked beans. It was a good tin of baked beans…” He stifled a laugh by pretending it was a crying sniffle, “probably very tasty, we won’t know unless we scoop some off the trees though.”  
The beans continued to bleed out into the dirt.  
“Do you have any words, Tango?”  
“Yeah… It was super hardy, I never thought it would die so young…”  
Zedaph tapped his finger to his left shoulder and then his right before clasping them together in a praying motion and staring up at the sky, “may the odds be ever in your favour, beans.”  
Tango remained quiet for a second. “Do you wonder if this will be the last time we’ll all be happy and laugh and joke around… you know… as a group?”  
Zedaph hummed, “I doubt it. Speaking of the group- Impulse?” Zedaph looked around. There was no answer.  
Tango skimmed the area, “hey, where is Impulse?”


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's kinda short. Next one's longer to make up for it.

“Can I roll for stealth?” Cleo asked. Joe rolled the dice along the table. It fell off and onto the carpet.  
“Dang It!” He dipped under the table to retrieve it, “you scored a one!”  
“Only one? Crikey.”  
Joe placed the dice back on the table, “so the guards notice you as you thought waltzing in and announcing your existence would be stealthy.”  
Cleo glanced at the mountain of unmarked test papers her and Joe were supposed to mark earlier. Guess that had slipped her mind. The librarian didn’t seem to care.  
“Wait, Joe, you know how there’s an apocalypse, right?”  
“In real life or the game?”  
“Real life. Wanna go out and like… role play dnd? But in the real world? I mean… is this even real life anymore? There are zombies outside.”  
“That could be fun!” Joe stood up, “we should search the school for supplies!”  
The lights suddenly went off, leaving the two in the dark.  
“Huh… Must be a power cut. I feel like we should try and get the power on that. That would be wise.”  
“Wow, really?” Cleo opened the door and stepped out. Joe followed, closing the door behind him. Cleo stared at the book he was holding under his arm, “why are you taking The Very Hungry Caterpillar with you?”  
“It’s culturally important. We mustn’t let it be forgotten. What if we see a crying child while we’re out there? I could read it The Very Hungry Caterpillar and all will be right with the world again.”  
Cleo remained silent. “I’ll never understand you, Joe, but you do you.” She began to walk the halls of the school.  
“Do you have a plan?”  
“What I reckon we should do, right, is go to the cafeteria, right, and steal all the food.”  
“That’s a brilliant idea!”  
Cleo opened the door to the cafeteria and hopped over the food counter and into the kitchen. “I roll for luck on getting food-!” She pulled open a couple of draws and didn’t find much. She scooped up as many Weetabix bars as she could into her arms and jumped back over, “we rolled a one- but-! Weetabix secured.”  
Joe nodded, “Weetabix secured.”  
“Where next?”  
Joe droned an ‘uhhhh,’ “how about get weapons? Well, you need one. I can just beat zombies over the head with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.”  
Cleo picked a few decent butcher knives out the draws, “I’d suggest doing that? What’s your dexterity stat?”  
“It ranges from a 5 to a solid -2,” Joe shrugged, “can I be trusted with knives?”  
“No. But zombies are attacking, so all rules are out the window.”  
“Yay! Okay, where to next?”  
“Okay, so you know the mountains near here?”  
“Yeah?”  
“We go there. It’s remote so the zombies won’t get us.”  
Cleo clasped her hands together, “one, it’s cold and we’ll die of hypothermia. Two, what do we do once we get there? We’ll have used all our food getting there only for what? To go back down?”  
“Well, we’re gonna have to wear coats, obviously. As for when we get there…” Joe thought for a second, “ski down on some twigs?”  
“Okay, that’s flawless logic. Let’s go.”

Walking to the staff room, Joe and Cleo stole some random co-workers’ coats. The co-workers’ are irrelevant and probably zombies. Don’t worry.  
Cleo wrapped a scarf around her neck, “we ready to go?”  
“I think so? If we pass any supermarkets while on the way, can we raid 'em?”  
“If you want.”  
“Yay!” Joe began to walk. Cleo stayed at his side. Joe held the door open for her.  
“Thank you!” She stepped out and into the world. The sun was beating down on the pavement. It was bright. Too bright. Not a cloud in the sky. If not for the apocalypse, now would probably be a nice day to go to the park. 

Cleo began to walk, “I reckon we should raid one house before retreating to the mountains though.”  
“What if the police find us? Won’t it technically count as armed robbery?”  
“Joe, look at me.” Joe looked at Cleo, a random citizen’s house behind her, she had a serious look on her face, “the police are dead, they don’t care.”  
“Right. And you plan to break in how?”  
Cleo punched the window. Her hand rebounded off it. She clutched it in pain, “not like that.”  
“Can I roll for the door open?” Joe pushed the door handle down and pulled. The door opened.  
“Huh, guess you rolled 20.”

Joe crept into the house, trying to keep his steps light. Cleo followed behind him.  
It didn’t take long for them to locate the kitchen.  
“Okay, you check the drawers, I’ll check the cupboards.”  
Joe nodded. He slid open one of the drawers. Just cutlery. The butcher knife in there did look a bit sharper than his current one. He put his own knife in and took the sharper one out.  
“Level up,” he murmured.  
Cleo turned around, a few tins of chicken and tomato soup in her arms, “can you help carry please?”  
Joe opened another drawer. He took out a shopping bag and held it open by both sides, “put ‘em in here! It’ll be easy to carry them this way!”  
“Oh, that’s smart!” Cleo unloaded her arms into the bag, “okay, should we head for the mountains?”  
“Sure! What could go wrong?”


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's longer to make up for the shortness of last one.

“Do you want some coffee?” Iskall called behind himself, pouring himself a coffee.  
Stress yawned, “yes please, I’d love that.”  
Iskall took out another mug from the kitchen cupboard. The kitchen was always his favourite room of the cabin. It wasn’t anything big or special, and there was basically no wall between it and the living room, but it was cozy. He poured the kettle into the mug and added a little bit of milk. He glanced at the radio from across the counter. Wouldn’t hurt to get a news briefing, right?  
He turned the knob. It was mostly static. He turned the knob ever so slightly clockwise until they hit a station. It began talking about the weather.  
He stepped over to Stress and placed her coffee down on the floor, “don’t kick over your coffee,” Iskall joked. He sat beside her.  
Stress sat herself up. She moved some hair out of her mouth and picked up her coffee-mug with both hands. She stared intently at the radio as it spoke, “so apparently there might be a snow storm later, huh?”  
“Ah, the radio always makes things sound way worse than they actually are. You know that. Unless…” Iskall made a threatening gesture, tensing his fingers to make them look like claws, “it’s a mega snowstorm of doom!”  
Stress giggled, “oh, stop it! We’re pros, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”  
“We’re pros?”  
“We’re such pros.”  
Iskall laughed, “that’s not what you said when you fell over yest-”  
“Yes it was!” Stress lightly hit his shoulder, Iskall just laughed harder, “I fell over like a pro, okay?”  
Iskall waved his hand, dismissing her claim, “okay then.” He stood up and left his empty mug on the side, “right, I’m going out. You coming?”  
“Maybe in a minute or two, I’m not quite woken up yet.” Stress looked at Iskall, there was tiredness in her big brown eyes.  
Iskall walked to the door and put on his massive coat, “alright, you’ll know where to find me,” he put on his boots and stepped out.

It had definitely snowed overnight. The railings of the decking had an inch thick layer of snow on top of them. Iskall’s axe laid at an angle against the wall of the dark-wood cabin. He picked it up, making sure to point the bit of the axe towards the ground. You were less likely to hurt yourself that way in the case that you slipped on the ice and fell. He stepped down the steps off the decking and onto the snow. It was deep but he’d experienced deeper. Must have been about 5 inches at its deepest points. He began to trudge. He hadn’t noticed it until now but it was actually still snowing. Iskall squinted his green eyes and pulled his scarf up over his mouth and nose. It didn’t take long until he was at the lumber forest.

Iskall searched the tree for a good place to make the initial chop. He raised his axe and swung it into the tree. He checked to make sure the tree would land in the right place and swung again. He repeated this a couple more until the tree landed with a large crash. He turned around to see Stress watching at a safe distance, her large pink puffer jacket obscuring most of her face and hair. Iskall waved with his whole forearm. If he’d waved with just his hand she might not have seen. 

Stress stepped towards him. As she did, the wind seemed to pick up slightly.

Stress raised her hands to near her mouth as if to call, “I think it’s best we stay inside today! The weather’s really kicking up!”  
Iskall looked around a little bit, he called back, “I think you’re right!” He looked down at the lumber he’d just cut down, “can I at least bring this back? I can cut it into smaller bits once inside.”  
“Don’t be stupid, that’ll just slow us down. We need to get home fast, Iskall.”  
“Aw, come on. I’m strong! I can hurl it back to the cabin no problem!”  
“This is not negotiable!”  
“Okay! Okay! Fine!” Iskall dropped the wood and muttered something under his breath in Swedish Stress didn’t quite catch, “but if we lose money this month and have to sacrifice either a couple of meals or heating for a couple hours each day, it’s your fault.”  
“Excuse you? Would you rather die out here in the snow storm?”  
“We could be back by now if you hadn’t debated me over this,” Iskall argued. He picked up one end of the coniferous log again and began to drag it with him.  
Stress sighed and walked ahead of him to emphasise her point about how they’d both be faster if Iskall just abandoned the log. Iskall huffed in annoyance, clearing noticing what she was doing. Stress smirked underneath her layers. She had put a good distance between her and Iskall now. The cabin was close by. She wanted to guess less than 15 metres but it was a little hard to judge given the thickness of snow. She’d left the door unlocked. She thought that it would only take a few minutes, leave, bring Iskall back, go home. No one would break in. It would have been a quick trip but no, Iskall decided to be awkward. The storm kicked up even more. It was impossible to hear Iskall’s footsteps behind her. Come to think of it, she couldn’t hear them at all. Although she knew it would slow her down, Stress turned around.

Iskall was nowhere in sight.

Stress’ heart missed a beat. She called, “Iskall!? Iskall!? Stop hiding, this isn’t funny!”  
No answer.  
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?! You can come out now?!”  
Only the wind was heard.  
She grew desperate, “if you don’t come out on the count of three- I’ll- I’ll not put marshmallows in your hot chocolate later!”  
Not even the faintest noise of Iskall’s footsteps.  
“Three!”  
The wind howled.  
“Two!”  
Stress could barely see a metre in front of her. She blinked the tears out her eyes, knowing it’ll be harder to see with them obscuring her sight.  
“One…?”  
Iskall didn’t respond.

Stress’ heart seemed to kick up, pounding against her ribcage like it wanted to escape. She turned around and ran. She grabbed hold of one of the beams holding up the overhang over the decking to keep her momentum while she turned and ran up the steps. She swung herself against the door and slammed it shut once she was in.

She led against the door for a second, trying to catch her breath. Iskall was still out there. He’d freeze to death if he didn’t come back. Should she go back out and search for him after warming up? Was it worth the risk? Iskall knew the area like the back of his hand. He’d probably know which way to go just by judging where the snow is thicker due to dents in the ground. Iskall would come back. He wasn’t exactly light either. The wind wouldn’t have just swept him away. It was strong, yes, but if it wasn’t strong enough to carry away Stress, it certainly wouldn’t be able to carry Iskall.

She breathed out a sigh and slid her coat off. She could have almost sworn she saw a shadow move out the corner of her eye. She whipped her head around, determined to catch it. Something had definitely moved. She readjusted her grip on her axe and crept around the house. At worst, it would be a wolf or a bear. At best, it was probably just her imagination.

A human head poked up over the dining table. He looked quite young, mid to late twenties, brown hair, slight stubble and square-rimmed glasses. He gasped and then ducked back down. Stress lowered her weapon, “hello?”  
A different head poked up over the table. A lady, ginger haired and pale skinned, “oh thank god,” she sounded English, “I thought you were going to kill us.”  
Stress put her axe by the door, “who’re you? How’d you get all the way up here?”  
The man stood up, he wasn’t super tall but he wasn’t short either. Stress wanted to guess around 5”8-5”10 somewhere? He straightened himself out, “well, I’m Joe and this is my not-friend not-Cleo.”  
“Oi!”  
Joe shrugged.  
“How’d you get up in the mountains?”  
“We walked,” Joe answered.  
“Why are you here?”  
“Zombies.”  
“What?”  
“Oh, there’s a zombie apocalypse in the town. We fled up here because we didn’t think the zombies would come up here,” Joe pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, “but then the snowstorm hit and we had to take refuge- and your door was unlocked so…”  
“We didn’t take anything,” Cleo added.  
Stress weighed up her options. She couldn’t just kick them out. No, oh heavens no, not back out into the snow. “Okay, you can stay but once the snow clears, you’re going back down.”

But the snow didn’t clear. Three sleeps had passed and the wind continued howling. Although Stress didn’t dislike Joe and Cleo, she did want them gone. They were nice but they weren’t Iskall. Iskall hadn’t returned either.  
Stress took a candle out the cupboard and lit it. Placing it down in the window sill, the snow was still falling outside. She sighed. If Iskall was alive, he’d be back by now, surely.

Joe’s reflection formed in the window. He opened his mouth to speak but instead walked away.

Stress was most likely grieving over something. Although Joe was curious, it would be disrespectful to ask. He sat back down at the table with Cleo. She was playing a one-player card game of some kind, focussing intently.  
“How long do you think until the snow passes?” Joe asked, bored out of his mind.  
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Cleo didn’t seem interested in conversation.

Joe looked around the kitchen for any form of entertainment. He’d spotted it. Like a predator spotting prey, Joe had found his fix: a humble radio. He prowled over to it like a predator stalking its prey and turned it on.  
“-eft alive, please go to 92W, 37N. Those are coordinates. I have a bunker with enough food to last many people a lifetime. This message will repeat every hour until August 30th. Please, tell everyone you can about this. That’s 92W, 37N. Not everyone has a radio. Please, if you’re left alive, go to 92W, 37N.”  
“Hey! We should go there?”  
Cleo moved one of her cards across the table, “go where?”  
“The coordinates that the radio man just said! Were you even listening?”  
“Nope.”  
“Oh, he said we should go to certain coordinates to get food and not die.”  
Cleo swished her cards into a pile on the table, she looked up at Joe, “I’m sold. But one thing?”  
“Oh?”  
“How’d we get out of this blizzard?”  
Joe thought, “okay… so… you know how we have not-broken legs that can run really fast-?”  
Stress made her way to the group and sat down at the table, “I could perhaps help?”  
“How so?”  
“I know the area. I know a shortcut down the mountain too that’s, for the most part, sheltered from the blizzard.”  
“Then it’s a deal!” Cleo stood, “I say we leave at sun rise, that way we’ll make the most of the day light. How’s that sound?”  
Joe nodded in agreement. Stress gave a half hearted thumbs up.  
“So it’s settled.”


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh yeah, I don't think I've creditted yet so here!  
> https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/618314308275863552/zombie-apocalypse-au-masterpost  
> Basically every idea and concept you see here are actually from the HermitcraftHeadcanons community on tumblr! In that link are a list of every concept with credit!

Mumbo’s bunker wasn’t amazing, but it was home. And that’s all that really mattered, right? It was an interesting story on how he got there too. Originally, he was on his way to an interview at Concorp Industries. Apparently, due to an accident with two of the staff, it got cancelled and it was recommended he reschedule in three days. Three days went by and… the streets were filled with zombies. Judging by this, it was best he didn’t go to that interview. Zombies had ended up storming his house so he grabbed whatever he could and ran. All he could grab was a pillow and a blanket considering he was just lazing around and doing nothing on his bed.

After running for about ten minutes, he’d located a pretty alright spot on the edge of town. It wasn’t much, just a bit of a shelter. A house mostly in the forest that must have been abandoned for years. It had vines crawling down the walls and much of the place was shrouded in mold. Under normal circumstances, it would have probably been a place any rationally thinking adult would stay away from and rebellious teenagers would go to smoke weed. But there came one issue. Protection.  
He knew himself he had no combat skills whatsoever. But he needed a method of defence, right? What better way than to that then set up traps? They weren’t anything amazing. Just a couple of nets leading into a hole covered with leaves. He didn’t even have to ‘cover’ them properly. Zombies were pretty dim.  
Waking up was always the hardest part though. If he hadn’t brought his pillow initially, he wouldn’t know what he’d do. The floor was littered with beetles and in the main room, the one he slept in, there was an absolute unit of a spider just sitting in one of the ceiling corners. It watched him menacingly. He sat up, his whole body aching from sleeping on such a hard surface. There were noises outside. It sounded like screaming. Mumbo hoisted himself up from the floor and crept over to a whole where a window probably used to be, peaking out ever so slightly.

There was a man. He was quite short. He was in a red sweater and had honey brown hair. He was fighting a zombie. His strategy seemed to be: Punch it, run away, run around it in circles for a bit, punch it again, rinse and repeat. His agility was incredible to watch. That was, until he fell over. And then the screaming started. Was it worth helping him? Mumbo couldn’t just let the guy get bitten. It was risky. Oh- who was he kidding? He side jumped through the window, dagger in hand. He dashed in front of the man as quickly as he could, thrusting his dagger through the zombie’s belly.  
This bought the man some time to stand up, “cheers!” he dusted himself off a little.  
Mumbo nodded.  
The man looked to the side, “oh god… There are so many more of them…” He sounded more disappointed than anxious.  
Mumbo narrowed his eyes at them, “should we run or-?”  
“If we deal with them now we won’t have to deal with them later. Come on!”  
Without waiting for objection, the man was already charging at the zombies.

Mumbo chased after him, determined to see this kid through. What if he got bit? What if he messed up somehow and became one of them? Before he knew it, he was slashing as many zombies as he could. There was blood roaring in his ears. The taste or iron was a surprised but unwelcome one. He slashed across one of their eyes. He meant to go for the neck but- wait. That was a human. Very human. He had brown hair and a beard, he was in a big coat. He doubled over in pain, screaming. Mumbo backed away. After a few more minutes of hacking and slashing, the zombies were down.

The man had blood streaming down the right side of his face. Mumbo stepped over, offering his hand.  
He rubbed the back of his neck, “my word- I’m so sorry. I thought you were a zombie…”  
The man covered his eye with his palm, his voice was filled with pain, “ha… no worries.” He took Mumbo’s hand and stood up.  
“Who’re you?”  
“I’m Iskall.” He looked over at the shorter man, currently stomping on a zombie’s head, “who’s your friend?”  
“I’m gonna be real, I don’t know. I met him just a second ago.”  
“Oh. Well… Who’re you?”  
“I’m Mumbo. Nice to meet you, Iskall. Once again, so sorry about your eye.”  
“Ah, don’t worry. I’m lucky to be alive right now.”  
Mumbo looked back at his bunker, he pointed with his thumb, fisted closed, at the wreck. “If you come inside I could try and patch it up for you? I scavenged a hospital yesterday and found one roll of bandages.”  
Iskall smiled, “that would be absolutely brilliant, thank you!”  
Mumbo called over to the shorter man, “hey! Uhh- you wanna come in too? It’s much safer inside than it is inside!”  
The short man turned around, “sure!”

He followed the two inside the bunker. Mumbo stepped over to his ‘pile of haul’ as he’d been calling it for a water bottle. He searched up the cleanest rag he could find, “hey Iskall, mind sitting down for a sec? Sorry, I don’t have chairs.”  
Iskall sat on the floor.  
Mumbo poured some water on the clean-ish rag and began to scrub the blood off of Iskall’s face. His eye was scrunched close, probably in unimaginable pain. “Hey, uhh- wait, what is your name?”  
The short man looked over at him, “you can call me Grian.”  
“Ah, yes, Grian! Can you pass me the bandages please? They’re right by your feet.”  
Grian squatted down to pick up the bandages. He passed them to Mumbo, “here.”  
“Cheers.” Mumbo started at Iskall’s forehead and tried to wrap them around the upper right side of his face, “so…” he tried to make conversation, “what’s your favourite colour?” Bad question.  
“Green. And yours?” There was a hint of laughter in Iskall’s voice. He probably found the awkwardness amusing.  
“I’m an orange guy myself.” After tying a knot, Mumbo stepped away to admire his rookie bandaging skills “you know what? I’m chuffed to bits with that. I was honestly expecting way worse.” There was still a bit of the wound poking out the left side of the bandage just over Iskall’s nose, but it was light and not bleeding, just a tear in the first or second layer of skin. It probably wouldn’t get infected.

“You know, I actually had no idea there was an apocalypse,” Iskall stood up and went to lean against one of the damp walls.  
Grian blinked in confusion, “what do you mean?”  
“Well… I lived in the mountains and it was quite remote. Our only real source of news was a radio that had rubbish signals and only worked at certain spots in the house at certain points in the day and on certain channels.”  
Mumbo sat down beside Grian, “and how did you get here?”  
Iskall dead panned, “a snow storm hit and I fell off.”  
“You fell off the mountain?”  
“I rolled down, but yeah.”  
“How are you even ali-” Mumbo’s questions were cut short by a scream, “did you guys here that?”  
“We’re not deaf,” Grian rolled his eyes and stood up from his spot on the dusty floor.  
“I think it came from one of my traps…”  
“You set traps?”  
“Yes- don’t question it.” Mumbo began to walk to the back of the abandoned house. Like he expected, there was a man hanging upside down with his ankle in the rope he’d set to hang anything it caught upside down for easy, piñata-like hitting. He didn’t look like a zombie. Quite the opposite actually. Dark clothing with a black bandana covering most of his blond hair. Some still slipped underneath it. He looked tired. Not in a way that could be fixed with sleep, more in a tired and sick of his situation kind of tired.  
“My word!” Mumbo gasped and stepped over to the trap. He tried to untie the rope the best he could, “I’m so sorry- I didn’t think it would catch alive folk!”  
“Ya think?” The human fell to the floor with a thud.  
“Um…” The man dusted himself off, Mumbo wrung his hands awkwardly, “sorry about that too?”  
“Ah, no worries man.”  
“Who’re you?” Grian asked.  
“The name’s Hypnotizd. And yours?”


End file.
